


Molten Gold

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: M/M, Night Lords Canon-Typical Warnings, Prince of Crows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:09:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2518646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He avoided glancing at the Emperor. Memory or not, he had no desire to feel his eyes fill with molten gold. The last time he’d looked upon the Emperor in the flesh, he’d endured seven weeks in the apothecarion while his vision healed. Impatience had driven him to the very edge of demanding augmetic eyes."—"Prince of Crows"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Molten Gold

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted from [tumblr](http://adepta-astarte.tumblr.com/post/90659733161/he-avoided-glancing-at-the-emperor-memory-or)

There was a hand stroking his hair. That was the first thing Sevatar noticed. Whoever it was wasn’t very good at it: too used to mocking gestures rather than sincere ones, if it weren’t that way on purpose, nails digging too deep and sharp tugs when strands of his hair got tangled, a maddeningly irregular pace.

He saw nothing but gold. It danced like the blackness behind his eyelids usually did, and he could not tell if his eyes were open or closed. Slowly his reasoning ability awoke and he could feel from the texture of the bandages over his face that they were held shut by soft medical tape and thick cotton pads.

He knew who was with him. There were a thousand and one reasons. The scent of him. (Sevatar could smell everything even over the heavy, sharp antiseptic scent everywhere. His senses were already adjusting for his lack of sight.) The fact who else would the Atramentar who were surely guarding the Apothecarion have let in? The size of the fingers against his scalp. Mostly he just knew, rendering all deduction irrelevant.

‘Sire.’

His primarch chuckled. ‘You should have known better, but you did it anyway.’

He hadn’t meant to, exactly. He didn’t usually do reckless things unless there was something to gain from them, however extreme he might get in those rare moments. He had known better, yet been drawn like a moth to a flame. He replied, ‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.’

Curze laughed again and Sevatar asked, ‘Is it permanent?’ He didn’t sound worried. He didn’t feel worried either, but there was always the question of if his voice would reveal something he’d missed. He assumed all adversity was surmountable because he had known little enough that he truly needed to struggle over. There were always augmetics. If the damage was to more than his physical eyes, well, he’d deal with that as sufficiently as he always did.

‘The Apothecaries say that’s likely, but they’re wrong.’

Sevatar shrugged, believing him without question. To whine was to admit weakness, but it did burn terribly and constantly and moreover it was fundamentally disconcerting to see light where there should be comforting darkness. ‘I never thought you the type to nurse me back to health, my lord. If you’re wearing nothing but a wimple and a narthecium, you are a horrible tease.’

Curze leaned down to give Sevatar a wet, biting kiss, but let him hear the brush of the fabric of duty-robes as he did so. ‘If you don’t feel punished enough already, just imagine how very bored you’re going to be.’ He dropped Sevatar’s head onto the cot abruptly. ‘It’ll take weeks, months more like.’

Sevatar growled deeply in his throat, inarticulate, more sheer annoyance than pain. That all he could handle. Curze knew what would actually get at him, the contact then sudden denial of it most of all, that he might tease him then leave him to stew for months with nothing to distract from it.

‘Yes?’ Seeing his First Captain brought low always seemed to draw out his primarch’s playful side at his expense, though Sevatar couldn’t say he found it unfamiliar without being hypocritical. He didn’t get the opportunity often.

‘I’m fine, don’t worry about me, I’ll just sit here in the light.’ He could half remember a Nostraman joke about passive-aggressive mothers of which that was the punch line, but not the rest of it; childhood memories were faded compared to the sharp clarity of transhuman experiences.

‘My father isn’t in the habit of sending other people’s first captains into seizures except on purpose. He spared you a message: “What did you see when your eyes were opened?”’

Sevatar mulled over this alone in his world of molten gold, and Curze demanded no answer aloud. ‘What did you see?’

‘The future.’

And then he had left Nostramo. Allowed himself to be taken away by a being totally antithetical to the darkness of their home. ‘What’s why we do all this. For a better future.’

Curze laughed a different laugh, like the last breaths of a man as he was strangled. ‘For the only future.’

He made Sevatar want to kill things for him, the only gesture of affection Sev really and truly believed in.

‘Someone had better have sent me a get-well-soon card or I’ll pine.’

‘I’ll make sure you get a fruit basket everyday.’

‘And the Apothecaries shouldn’t give me anything else so I can properly savour it, right?’ Valzen was Atramentar, so of course Sevatar would only complain rather than threaten no matter how much of an accessory he might be to other people’s ribbing of him. Sevatar didn’t make threats he didn’t entirely intend to carry out if the conditions he had put in them weren’t fulfilled.

‘Sounds right. Clever boy.’ Curze ruffled his hair again, and Sevatar leaned into it as natural and thoughtless as flowers he’d watched reaching for the sun as he shielded his eyes and watched the blood of battlefield be soaked up by their roots.

His first grab missed. His second was aimed correctly, but Curze moved. His third his primarch allowed to connect with his arm. Rolling as close as he could without falling off the Apothecarion cot, he could almost believe he saw black spots in the endless, glorious light when his nose brushed the Lord of the Night’s stomach.

‘Were you worried? You could have waited until a medical orderly sent word I’d woken if you wanted to reprimand me, my lord.’ He didn’t sound wistful, just pointing out an idle observation. Too formless to say aloud as some kind of accusation, he wondered: _You knew I wouldn’t die. You didn’t have to waste time sitting here. You didn’t have to touch me._

‘I like watching you sleep. You were screaming. That’s also a rare treat. Unfortunately you stopped when I leaned in close to hear, though the Apothecaries became much less annoyed by the racket.’

‘Huh.’ Sevatar filed that away with all the information he suspected was deeply meaningful and symbolic but had absolutely no ability how to interpret.

Curze tugged his arm away to remind Sevatar he was still gripping it, but unexpectedly said, ‘Want me to kiss it better?’

Sevatar could easily imagine a kiss that was also a bite, his cheeks wet and slimy with intraocular fluid as teeth clicked as they clipped through the thick ocular nerve deep in his skull. What he said anyway was, ‘Yes.’

He could imagine the shape of Curze’s cadaverous smile, with no idea if it existed outside his mind or not.

Curze leaned over him, throwing a leg over the bed to straddle him in one smooth-sounding motion. He kissed one eye, then the other, with enough pressure to make the soft tissue protest sharply but not rupture further. He could see a dark spot where he’d pressed, he was sure of it, and his breath escaped in a sigh of sheer relief.

It was difficult to breathe back in with the weight of his primarch crushing him, but Curze allowed Sevatar to squirm under him until he could expand his lungs sufficiently, if shallowly.

‘You’ll be giving up command for the Apothecarion next, sire.’

‘And you will blunder around the Apothecarion knocking over inanimate objects with each glaive swing. I won’t touch you again until you’ve won me another victory, first captain.’

‘Is that incentive? I don’t need any more. Just think of all the fun you could have with me even more at your mercy than usual.’

Curze smiled against his cheek so he could feel it. ‘If this were the end for you, I wouldn’t leave anyone else to pick you off to improve a reputation more than they deserve. I would take you apart and hold you thought it. I would make you scream your throat to shreds and give you everything you wanted me to give. I would make you beg until you couldn’t tell the difference between sobbing for me to stop and pleading for more.’

And Sevatar would love him for it every moment through his last, he knew. More than pleasure, more than pain, more than life or death, the full force of his primarch’s attention was all he wanted and all his world would consist of. He didn’t know why he was his primarch’s favourite. He couldn’t imagine anyone not feeling or acting the same as he did, nor why Curze had chosen his offering above all others. He didn’t care.

Curze nuzzled his neck in approval at the whimper of longing that escaped him, sharp teeth tracing arteries. He pulled away. ‘But we both know that’s not how you die.’

Then there was only empty air and the crushing weight removed from his chest, his body straining for lost warmth and flush with desire, as it got from the simplest touch from his primarch. The scent of old blood and rank grease lingered. He couldn’t see a damn thing.

At least, Sevatar told himself, he had weeks to plan his revenge.


End file.
